If A equals B, and B equals C, then it follows logically that A equals C, and even that C equals A. Most humans know that, sort of. So does Rio.
Rio, a seven-year-old California sea lion living at the University of California at Santa Cruz, thinks like a human. After learning to pair the silhouette of a crab with that of a tulip, and then the tulip with a radio, Rio makes a logical leap: she matches the crab with the radio. It may seem a small thing, but it is a basic kind of logical thinking. And Rio is the first nonhuman animal that is known to display it.
Rio even managed to do backwards transitivity, that is, she was capable of associating the elements in reverse order, too. That might not sound especially hard to you, but then again you aren't a sea lion. They tested Rio with 90 different shapes (30 in each category) and tried to see if she could go back and forth between them. She aced the test.
Oh, and here's the best part. They tested her again 10 years later, just for kicks, and she still remembered everything she learned in the original experiment. I can't even remember what the previous entry on this blog was about.
No other animal has yet matched Rio’s performance, according to Schusterman (Rio’s trainer, animal behaviorist Ronald Schusterman of UCSC and California State University at Hayward). But that doesn’t mean sea lions are smarter than dolphins or chimpanzees. I’m convinced that many animals have this ability, says Schusterman. They just haven’t been tested along these lines.
Apart from their intelligence, they exhibit habits and behaviours just like dogs or cats, have a look at the clips below and be astounded by how tame, friendly and intelligent they are
- Michael
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